This is it! The beginning of the infection. The onset of Baby Rabies. If you think I sound crazy, you’re right. I totally was.

And this one is dedicated to all the ladies I met on thebump.com Babies On The Brain message board. Can you believe I’m friends with many of them still? xoxox to you gals.

A couple technical notes- I am hearing from some of you that you are having issues playing the podcast from within the app. First, please be sure to update the app since many bugs were fixed with the last update.

This is a bit of an experiment going live before I’d planned to do so, but it’s one of those things I have to push publicly to see if all moving parts are working together properly. And to get this listed in iTunes. YES, it’s a podcast… sorta. It’s a Pod-ioBook! And this is the first episode of probably about 10-15 that I’ll be publishing weekly after I’m sure all of this is operating as planned. SURPRISE!

Of course, right now it looks like it’s not working… so sorry!

First thing’s first, what’s a Pod-ioBook? I can’t say I came up with the term, but it fits this project perfectly, and I’m sure glad someone else thought of it because I was struggling with what to call a podcast that was really going to be a set number of episodes where I’d narrate a sort of memoir/blog-book hybrid.

I, like many others, was sucked into Serial about a year ago, the first podcast I’d ever devoted myself to, and what I loved most was that it told a story and there was an end to it. I can not commit to a lot in my life right now, and I needed a beginning, middle, and end. (Though you bet I’ve been devouring every follow up article about Adnan since.)

I’d been toying with the idea of doing a podcast for a few months, but was always hesitant to jump into another endeavor that would require regular commitment on my part, and that I’d need to create fresh content for each time.

I’m very protective over what little brain capacity I have left these days.

Simultaneously, I was continuing my search for an agent and/or publisher who may want to take on humorous memoir I’d been writing for years. Literally years. I was getting a lot of great, constructive feedback, but mostly I was hearing “this is such a saturated niche… mommy blogger memoirs are very hard to sell.”

And so after I listened to that last episode of Serial and began to hear about how podcasts are the next big thing, the wheels in my head began to turn. I didn’t need to create fresh content. I could create a podcast with a beginning, middle, and end. I could publish this memoir I’d been working so hard on, but in an easily consumable format for the people who I think will want to hear it most- parents with very little time to read to begin with, who may find it easier to carve out 15-20 minutes to listen to something.

I could give up the drudge of emailing and rejection as this story sat on my hard drive (and in the cloud, and in a backup), and I could turn it into something fun.

So that’s what this is- the Baby Rabies Pod-ioBook.

I would be lying if I said it’s complete, but if I wait to start it when it’s finished, it may never happen. I have the first 6 or so episodes written and am recording them now. I’ll finish the rest as we go. In the end, I think it may be about 15 15-20minute episodes.

It begins in the spring of 2007, a year before I became a mother. I feel like if I say much more about it, I’ll give it away. I will add, though, that there is some adult language and it’s not really something you want your kids to hear, I’m guessing. So I hope you take it for a jog, or enjoy it in the car pickup line before school lets out… whatever works for you.